Chartreuse Voiron Green Vintage 1960s 350ml [Low Shoulder, With Box]

Chartreuse Voiron Green Vintage 1960s 350ml [Low Shoulder, With Box]

In 1605, at a Chartreuse monastery of Vauvert, in Paris, the monks received a gift from Marshal d’Estrées, an already ancient manuscript from an “Elixir”, whose origins are unknown. In this period, only a few monks and even fewer apothecaries understood the use of herbs and plants in the treatment of illness. The manuscript’s recipe was so complex that only bits and pieces of it were understood and used by the monastery’s apothecary, Brother Jerome Maubec. He finally unraveled the mystery and, in 1737, drew up the practical formula for the preparation of the Elixir. The distribution and sales of this new medicine were limited. One of the monks of La Grande Chartreuse would load his mule with the small bottles that he sold in Grenoble and Chambéry, and other nearby villages.

So tasty was this elixir that it was often used as a beverage rather than a medicine. Recognizing this, the monks, in 1764, adapted the elixir recipe to make a milder beverage, and which we know today as “Green Chartreuse” (55% alcohol). The success of this liqueur was immediate and its fame was no longer restricted to the area around La Grande Chartreuse.  In 1838, the Chartreuse distillers developed a sweeter form of Chartreuse: “Yellow Chartreuse” (43% alcohol).

In 1903, the French government nationalized the Chartreuse distillery. The monks were expelled. The monks took their secret recipe to their refuge in Tarragona, Spain, where they built a new distillery, and began producing their liqueurs with the same label, but with an additional label which said “Liqueur fabriquée à Tarragone par les Pères Chartreux” (“liqueur manufactured in Tarragona by the Carthusian Fathers”).

After World War II, the government lifted the expulsion order, making the Carthusian monks once again legal French residents. Since the closure of the distillery of Tarragona in 1989, the liqueur is produced exclusively in Voiron using the herbal mixture prepared by two monks at Grande Chartreuse.